Once upon a time, it was the leading city of the Hanseatic League. Today Lübeck is a picturesque town in northern Germany and the first ”proper” stop on our road trip to France.
I have been to Lübeck once before, I can’t have been more than seven or eight years old, so needless to say: I don’t remember much of that trip. While we were planning our road trip, we decided to spend two nights in Lübeck for several reasons. Firstly, this is a city that we want to experience. There is so much history in this city, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Secondly, geographically this is the perfect place to rest for a while before driving to Belgium. It’s not very far from where the ferry dropped us off yesterday, in Travemünde. Thirdly, the size of the town is doable (the population is slightly over 200,000). Before embarking on this journey, we decided that we wanted to avoid really big cities – both because of the traffic and Little A.
The Things We Saw and Did in Lübeck
Before coming here, we knew that we could see a lot of the city on foot. It is the extensive Brick Gothic architecture that the city is famous for. We are staying a couple of kilometers from the city center, so all we need to do is take the baby, the pram, and just leave the house. The old part of the city – the one we came here to see – is on an island. It took us about six hours to walk around it and see the main sights, including Town Hall, the cathedral, the Salzspeicher (salt storehouses) and the Holsten Gate (Holstentor). It was raining during our visit, so we did spend some time hiding from the rain. We also dedicated a few hours to food and drinks, so altogether we were out and about ten hours today.
Lübeck was the home to (at least) two famous German writers who both received the Nobel Prize in Literature: Thomas Mann and Günther Grass. Their homes have been made into museums and of course, I wanted to go and take a look at those houses. Now, I must confess that I have read neither Mann nor Grass, but perhaps I will do it once we are back home from this trip. At the end, we saw the Buddenbrookhaus from the outside.
We also saw a lot of churches! The architecture is really amazing – not only as far as churches are concerned. I really enjoyed walking down random streets with old and beautiful buildings. In one way, Lübeck reminds us a lot of Riga, but it is not as compact. The island was much bigger than we had expected it to be,
Our aim is to find typical food and drink from all the places we visit during this trip. Lübeck specialties include marzipan and Rotspon wine. We did not try the wine, but we have some marzipan for later. Also, Jesper tried some German beer and I had some Radler*: a 50:50 mixture of beer and sparkling lemonade.
Thus far we have really enjoyed this trip. Little A has been happy most of the time. Of course, she spends a lot of her day sleeping but whenever she’s awake, she smiles and talks a lot. It seems like she enjoys being on the road.
Our Airbnb Stay in Karlshof
We have spent two nights in an Airbnb-accommodation in the neighborhood of Karlshof. The neighborhood is really nice and peaceful. It’s also possible to walk from here to the city center, it’s a few kilometers. We thought we’d be staying in a room, so we were really positively surprised that we have a bedroom, bathroom, and living room/kitchen. There’s also a washing machine, which is useful as we don’t want to carry around on dirty laundry through half of Europe. The only negative thing is the wifi, which has been rather slow when uploading photos resulting in fewer on our posts.
As I mentioned above, we’ll spend one more night here in Lübeck. However, tomorrow we need to start early as we hit the road towards Belgium via Bielefeldt. Now it’s time for us to wish you goodnight!
Join us on the road through Europe here!
*Edit: In Northern Germany, the name is Alster and not Radler. Thank you, Friederike, for letting us know.
